urn:taro:utexas.hrc.00607Freya Stark:An Inventory of Her Collection at the Harry Ransom CenterFinding aid created by Bob TaylorHarry Ransom Center, 2010, 2014Finding aid encoded by Stephen Mielke, 1
July 2010Finding aid written in EnglishThe University of Texas at Austin, Harry Ransom
CenterStark, Freya, 1893-1993Freya Stark Collection1893-1993 (bulk 1920-1976)30 document boxes, 1 oversize folder (osf), 2 galley files (gf) (12.6 linear
feet)The Freya Stark collection spans the
years 1893 to 1985 and embraces in the main her correspondence, along with
publication files of thirteen major works and drafts of a considerable number of
minor pieces. Also present are some clippings, photographs, and invitations,
together with third party correspondence.English
Acquisition:

Freya Madeline Stark was born in Paris on 31 January 1893 to Robert and Flora Stark.
The elder Starks--the father of British birth, the mother born on the
continent--were cousins and artists. After several years of living at Chagford,
Devon and in northern Italy, Robert and Flora Stark separated, and Flora, with Freya
and a younger sister Vera, remained in Italy, first at Dronero, and then at Asolo,
near Venice.

Freya's fascination with exotic lands is said to have dated from her earliest reading
of the British romantic poets, as well as FitzGerald's translation of the

Rubaiyat. The future travel writer and explorer
developed a keen interest in the Middle East, and, aided by a remarkable skill with
languages, quickly began a life-long program of self-education, mastering modern
European tongues and eventually classical and Oriental languages. Her principal
formal education was at Bedford College, University of London, in the years 1911 to
1914.

After service in World War One as a military nurse in Italy and a postwar period of
commercial gardening, Freya decided upon travel in the Near East. This decision was
supported by additional language preparation at the London School of Oriental
Studies, as well as by her desire to escape from her domineering mother and various
family obligations.

Freya Stark's first trip to the Levant began in November, 1927 and was eventually
chronicled in

Letters from Syria (1942). Her small
frame hid a fierce will and a hardy constitution, and Freya refused the usual
cosseting tours, preferring to eat, live, and travel as the local populations did.
Many of her fellow Britons feared she had gone native, but she realized this was the
only path to an authentic knowledge of the Middle East and its peoples.

Stark returned to Lebanon in 1929, and eventually found her way to Baghdad, where her
first published work,

Baghdad Sketches, appeared in
1932. Journeys into Iran during the years 1929 to 1931 resulted in The Valleys of the Assassins (1934), her first work to
achieve wide recognition. Valleys was in fact
reprinted three times within a year of its appearance.

At the end of 1934, Freya Stark's first expedition into Arabia was eventually
terminated when she contracted measles and, upon relapse, had to be rescued by the
British Royal Air Force. Another Arabian expedition was also ended by serious
illness in 1938. Despite these hardships enough was accomplished for her to publish

The Southern Gates of Arabia, Seen in the
Hadhramaut, and A Winter in Arabia between
1936 and 1940.

During the Second World War Freya Stark placed her knowledge of the Middle East at
the service of Britain's Ministry of Information. She worked to counter Axis
propaganda among the populations of the region and helped found the Arab Brotherhood
of Freedom, an anti-Nazi organization.

In 1947, Freya Stark married Stewart Perowne, a British diplomat she had known since
the late 1930s, and with him she moved first to Barbados and then to Libya. The
marriage did not prosper, and in 1952 they separated. Despite this setback and her
absence from the Middle East, Stark was able to publish three volumes of
autobiography in the years between 1950 and 1953, followed by a fourth in 1961.

Freya Stark discovered a new interest in Asia Minor in the 1950s. This soon led to
her learning Turkish and setting out on a series of difficult journeys, often on
horseback, to the far corners of Anatolia.

Ionia: A
Quest (1954), The Lycian Shore (1956), Alexander's Path (1958), Riding
on the Tigris (1959), and Rome on the
Euphrates (1966) were published as a result.

After Freya Stark was, in 1972, created a Dame of the British Empire she continued
her arduous regimen with travel by horseback in the Himalayas, as well as rafting
down the Euphrates. Only as infirmity overcame her in her final decade did she slow
down. Dame Freya died a centenarian at Asolo on 9 May 1993.

Sources:

Geniesse, Jane Fletcher.

Passionate Nomad: the Life of Freya
Stark. New York: Random House, 1999.

The Freya Stark Collection spans the years 1893 to 1993 and embraces in the main her
correspondence, along with publication files of thirteen major works and drafts of a
considerable number of minor pieces. Also present are some clippings, photographs,
and invitations, together with third party correspondence. The collection is largely
in its original order and is arranged in four series: Series I. Works, 1916-1976 (9
boxes); Series II. Correspondence, 1893-1985 (20.5 boxes); Series III. General
Research, 1913-1976 (.5 box); and Series IV. Additional Materials, 1967-1993 (1
folder).

The Works series includes various drafts of those publications written or edited by
Freya Stark between 1934 and 1976. These are

Dust in the
Lion's Paw, Ionia, a Quest, The Minaret of Djam, A Peak in
Darien, Perseus in the Wind, Rome on the Euphrates, Seen in
the Hadhramaut, Space, Time & Movement in
Landscape, Traveller's Prelude, Turkey: a Sketch of Turkish History, The Valleys of the Assassins, A
Winter in Arabia, The Zodiac Arch, and
An Italian Diary. The last title cited is Flora
Stark's account of her detention by the Italian authorities in the early years of
World War II, edited after the author's death by her daughter.

For all titles published by the firm of John Murray beginning in 1933 relevant
correspondence is found in Series II under the personal heading for John Jock Murray, 1909-1993. Various other outgoing Freya
Stark letters in that series bear indications of editorial marking for their future
use in either accounts of Miss Stark's travels or as part of her published letters.
Such markings are particularly evident in those addressed to Flora Stark.

The extensive collection of brief pieces Freya Stark created for various purposes
present in the Works series includes periodical articles, broadcasts, forewords,
juvenilia, lectures, memoranda, and reviews. These range in date from verse written
in 1916 to a dinner address of 1975. Those short pieces found in folders 1.2, 1.6,
and 1.8 are not individually identified in the folder list but are indexed
alphabetically at the end of the list. Brief pieces set aside for use in

The Zodiac Arch, whether actually published there or
not, are not separately indexed.

Series II, Correspondence, contains both the earliest and the latest items in the
Freya Stark Collection, and, more significantly, includes extensive correspondence
with the several persons who figured most significantly in her long life. At twenty
and a half boxes it is by far the bulk of the collection, and of this total the John
Murray file at two boxes is the largest grouping.

The earliest bit of correspondence, dated February 8th
1893, from madame Delécluse to Mrs.
Stark & Miss Freya Madeline Stark, offers the writer's best wishes and congratulations to the newborn and
her mother. It was accompanied by lilies of the valley
and red & white cyclamen. The latest missive, dated 31/May/85, is from Freya to Sir Michael Stewart and
concerns a projected Mediterranean tour.

The series contains scant correspondence on household matters and little on the
merely social or anything that could be called broadly cultural. There is some fan
mail, but it is not extensive. The correspondents are mostly directly involved, in
one capacity or another, in Freya Stark's life work, and are in the main British.
The political tone is essentially conservative.

For Freya Stark's family there is a large amount of correspondence present, including
a full box of letters from Freya to her mother, together with two folders from Flora
to her daughter. As noted above, Freya's letters to Flora were, in many cases,
sources for published works. There are also three folders from Freya to her father
and a single folder from Robert to his elder daughter. From Vera Stark di Roascio
there are--Vera having died young--only a few letters to be found to her sister
Freya. Costanza di Roascio Boido, Vera's only child to survive the Second World War,
is represented by one folder.

Among Freya Stark's correspondents is found a number of significant writers and
scholars. Of this group, Sir Sydney Cockerell is represented by the most extensive
correspondence--two folders, covering the years 1934 to 1961. Among the many topics
addressed by Cockerell is Stark's

The Arab Island
(Knopf, 1945), for the manuscript of which he provided pages of critiques and
suggestions. None of Stark's letters to Cockerell are in the collection. Other
writers for whom significant incoming correspondence is present are Gertrude
Caton-Thompson, Victor Cunard, Lawrence Durrell, Austen Harrison, Alan and Lucy
Moorehead, Harold Nicolson, Vita Sackville-West, Paul Scott, Lionel Smith, and Colin
Thubron.

The friends and acquaintances of Freya Stark for whom significant correspondence
exists in the collection are a disparate group. Taken chronologically, the first
group includes an old family friend (Herbert Young), two women important in the
years Freya was creating her own unique path (Viva Jeyes and Venetia Buddicom), a
patient and indulgent publisher (Jock Murray), and a career diplomat with whom
marriage failed (Stewart Perowne). In the second group, significant in the author's
postwar period of public recognition are found a former aide who became a lifelong
friend (Pamela Cooper), and two ladies of wealth and social position who made life
easier for the writer in her later years (Lady Sybil Cholmondeley and Dulcie
Deuchar). Of this group Stewart Perowne and Lady Sybil Cholmondeley are represented
by four folders of correspondence, the others, save Murray, by single folders. Jock
Murray's social correspondence with Freya is intermixed with their business letters.

Various military figures appear among Freya Stark's correspondents. These men range
from Lt. Col. Morice Lake (who in Aden in the late 1930s was charged with keeping an
eye on Freya's forays into the Hadhramaut) to Maj. Colin Mackenzie, a serving
officer in the postwar British army and, like Freya, a lover of wild places. Lt.
Gen. Sir John Bagot Glubb--Glubb Pasha, commander of the Arab Legion--is represented
by correspondence official and personal written between 1943 and 1960.

Miss Stark's period of service under the first Earl Wavell during his tenure as
viceroy of India produced correspondence that for his part is here found in carbon
typescripts. There is likewise a group of letters from the elder Wavell's son
Archibald John dating until shortly before his 1953 death in Kenya. Charles W. B.
Rankin, whom Freya first knew in India as the viceroy's private secretary became a
good friend in the postwar years, as revealed in their letters. Each of these
figures is represented by a folder of correspondence, except Morice Lake, from whom
several letters are present.

A number of diplomats and military intelligence figures appear as correspondents in
the Stark Collection. Sir Vyvyan Holt, whom Freya first met in Baghdad in 1930, is
represented by a folder of his personal letters down to 1958. Sir Iltyd Clayton and
Sir Kinahan Cornwallis, both of whom worked with Freya Stark in the early years of
World War II, together with (from a slightly later period) Moore Crosthwaite and Sir
Michael Stewart are also represented here. The two folders of correspondence from
Stewart and one of Freya's outgoing is the most numerous involving this group.

Series III, General Research, comprises five folders--a half box--of clippings,
ephemeral printed matter, fragments of research material, some third person
correspondence and a few photos. The most significant individual item found here is
Venetia Buddicom's Journal of the Jebel Druze, a typescript with handwritten
corrections, covering the travels of Buddicom and Freya Stark through that region in
the period 7-21 May 1928.

The third person correspondence present here dates from 1913 to 1952 and the most
frequent recipient was Flora Stark. Among these letters, those of Sir Akhbar Hydari
to Lord Halifax transmitting copies of the letters being sent to the chieftains of
the Hadhramaut in conjunction with Stark's 1934 expedition are perhaps the most
noteworthy.

Series IV, Additional Materials, consists of fifteen letters and postcards
(1967-1980) from Freya Stark to the Australian-born painter and sculptor Colin
Colahan and his wife Monique. In these letters Freya describes her travels from
1967, when she first explored central Asia, to 1980, when at the age of 87 she is
planning what she predicts will be her last proper
journey to Nepal and the Himalayas. Accompanying the letters are two
photographs of Freya and a portrait of her painted by Colin, two charcoal drawings
of the Colahans by Freya, and newspaper clippings of obituaries for Freya. These
materials were added to the Ransom Center’s Freya Stark Collection in 2014.

Other archives possessing Freya Stark material include the British Library, St.
Antony's College Oxford, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Collections in the
Ransom Center which contain material related to Stark include those of Nancy Cunard,
Georgia Sitwell, and Osbert Sitwell.